We're Spending $1.7 Trillion For Planes That Don't Work

[DrSchadenfreude]

We're Spending $1.7 Trillion For Planes That Don't Work

For that money, we could have cancelled American student loan debt. All of it.



www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a35631305/f-35-doesnt-work-1-7-trillion-dollars/


by Charles P. Pierce


February 25, 2021

It’s been a while since we checked in with our old friend, the F-35 next generation strike fighter, aka The Flying Swiss Army knife. Fortunately, David Axe at Forbes has been on the case, and we’ll let him deliver the punchline, albeit a punchline decades in the making.

But over 20 years of R&D, that lightweight replacement fighter got heavier and more expensive as the Air Force and lead contractor Lockheed Martin packed it with more and more new technology. Yes, we’re talking about the F-35. The 25-ton stealth warplane has become the very problem it was supposed to solve. And now America needs a new fighter to solve that F-35 problem, officials said.

Is anyone ever going to ask the question seriously whether this country’s defense spending makes any damn sense at all, and mean it?

Brown’s comments are a tacit admission that the F-35 has failed. As conceived in the 1990s, the program was supposed to produce thousands of fighters to displace almost all of the existing tactical warplanes in the inventories of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps…But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35’s very concept. “They tried to make the F-35 do too much,” said Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C.

The only number that’s important to remember about this lemon is $1.7 trillion, which is how much of our money the government will have poured into this rathole in the sky by the end. On the electric Twitter machine, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has been good at estimating other uses for all that money. For example, for that money, we could have cancelled every dime of student loan debt. Or a survival check of $5,135 for every living American. Or house every homeless American 28 times over. 

[daleko]

Mar 1, 2021 15:19:08 GMT -5 DrSchadenfreude said:

We're Spending $1.7 Trillion For Planes That Don't Work
For that money, we could have cancelled American student loan debt. All of it...........

They should have contacted the folks that made those remote planes that flew into the TTs.

[AlaCowboy]

Every year the federal government spends a $ Trillion a year on people that don't work. It's called Welfare.

[Walter]

Mar 2, 2021 9:42:19 GMT -5 AlaCowboy said:

Every year the federal government spends a $ Trillion a year on people that don't work. It's called Welfare.

People like you?

[Panama pfRedd]

Mar 2, 2021 10:34:36 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 9:42:19 GMT -5 AlaCowboy said:

Every year the federal government spends a $ Trillion a year on people that don't work. It's called Welfare.

People like you?

You talking about getting his own money back that the government forcibly removed from his paycheck his whole life? THAT welfare? What a putz you are.

[Walter]

Mar 2, 2021 10:39:27 GMT -5 Panama pfRedd said:

Mar 2, 2021 10:34:36 GMT -5 Walter said:

People like you?

You talking about getting his own money back that the government forcibly removed from his paycheck his whole life? THAT welfare? What a putz you are.

That's HIS money?
Do tell.
There is a reason why more money is leaving the SS trust fund than arriving.
Can you guess what it is?

[Panama pfRedd]

Mar 2, 2021 11:55:54 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 10:39:27 GMT -5 Panama pfRedd said:

You talking about getting his own money back that the government forcibly removed from his paycheck his whole life? THAT welfare? What a putz you are.

That's HIS money?
Do tell.
There is a reason why more money is leaving the SS trust fund than arriving.
Can you guess what it is?

How do you know what his account was/is? Awful lot of ASSumptions on your part as usual, combined with a healthy dose of mind-reading as usual.
And the reason more is going out of SS than in is this little thing called baby boomers and the declining birth rate since then. Have a clue, fella.

[Walter]

Mar 2, 2021 12:18:49 GMT -5 Panama pfRedd said:

Mar 2, 2021 11:55:54 GMT -5 Walter said:

That's HIS money?
Do tell.
There is a reason why more money is leaving the SS trust fund than arriving.
Can you guess what it is?

How do you know what his account was/is? Awful lot of ASSumptions on your part as usual, combined with a healthy dose of mind-reading as usual.
And the reason more is going out of SS than in is this little thing called baby boomers and the declining birth rate since then. Have a clue, fella.

LOL...Go to the Medical board and read about his latest surgery and rehab.
I can virtually guarantee that he didn't pay that much money into the system in his lifetime.
Hell, I'm up over a half million dollars myself. No way I paid that much into the system.

According to folks like you, it's called...wait for it...socialism.

[AlaCowboy]

Mar 2, 2021 10:34:36 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 9:42:19 GMT -5 AlaCowboy said:

Every year the federal government spends a $ Trillion a year on people that don't work. It's called Welfare.

People like you?

No. Not me. I get Social Security, which I paid in to since 1962, and Medicare, which I paid in to since 1965. They are not welfare, no matter what you Loony Leftist Liberals want to call it.

[Panama pfRedd]

Mar 2, 2021 13:17:12 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 12:18:49 GMT -5 Panama pfRedd said:

How do you know what his account was/is? Awful lot of ASSumptions on your part as usual, combined with a healthy dose of mind-reading as usual.
And the reason more is going out of SS than in is this little thing called baby boomers and the declining birth rate since then. Have a clue, fella.

LOL...Go to the Medical board and read about his latest surgery and rehab.
I can virtually guarantee that he didn't pay that much money into the system in his lifetime.
Hell, I'm up over a half million dollars myself. No way I paid that much into the system.

According to folks like you, it's called...wait for it...socialism.

You're a dick. Everybody is not you.

[AlaCowboy]

Mar 2, 2021 11:55:54 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 10:39:27 GMT -5 Panama pfRedd said:

You talking about getting his own money back that the government forcibly removed from his paycheck his whole life? THAT welfare? What a putz you are.

That's HIS money?
Do tell.
There is a reason why more money is leaving the SS trust fund than arriving.
Can you guess what it is?

Could it be that certain classes of refugees the federal government brings in are automatically eligible for Social Security Assistance and Medicaid? All the Cambodians and Vietnamese that were brought here in the 1960s and '70s became Social Security eligible even though some never became American citizens. Since the 1990s it's been Middle Easterners and Latin American refugees.

[AlaCowboy]

Mar 2, 2021 13:17:12 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 12:18:49 GMT -5 Panama pfRedd said:

How do you know what his account was/is? Awful lot of ASSumptions on your part as usual, combined with a healthy dose of mind-reading as usual.
And the reason more is going out of SS than in is this little thing called baby boomers and the declining birth rate since then. Have a clue, fella.

LOL...Go to the Medical board and read about his latest surgery and rehab.
I can virtually guarantee that he didn't pay that much money into the system in his lifetime.
Hell, I'm up over a half million dollars myself. No way I paid that much into the system.

According to folks like you, it's called...wait for it...socialism.

Social Security paid nothing toward my surgeries, or for yours. That is Medicare, and that's why it's called insurance. As a working adult I paid for insurance that covered me from the first day I paid the first premium. I paid for Medicare for 46 years before I was allowed to use it. Seems like crappy insurance to me. How would you react if your Blue Cross or whatever you had all those years told you that you had to pay the premium for 46 years before you could use it?
I still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on my income.

[Walter]

Mar 2, 2021 21:41:10 GMT -5 AlaCowboy said:

Mar 2, 2021 11:55:54 GMT -5 Walter said:

That's HIS money?
Do tell.
There is a reason why more money is leaving the SS trust fund than arriving.
Can you guess what it is?

Could it be that certain classes of refugees the federal government brings in are automatically eligible for Social Security Assistance and Medicaid? All the Cambodians and Vietnamese that were brought here in the 1960s and '70s became Social Security eligible even though some never became American citizens. Since the 1990s it's been Middle Easterners and Latin American refugees.

Oh...right...non-white folks.
Yeah, you're right. Can't have that.

[Panama pfRedd]

Mar 3, 2021 13:55:59 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 21:41:10 GMT -5 AlaCowboy said:

Could it be that certain classes of refugees the federal government brings in are automatically eligible for Social Security Assistance and Medicaid? All the Cambodians and Vietnamese that were brought here in the 1960s and '70s became Social Security eligible even though some never became American citizens. Since the 1990s it's been Middle Easterners and Latin American refugees.

Oh...right...non-white folks.
Yeah, you're right. Can't have that.

Sad. Honestly just sad.

[AlaCowboy]

Mar 3, 2021 13:55:59 GMT -5 Walter said:

Mar 2, 2021 21:41:10 GMT -5 AlaCowboy said:

Could it be that certain classes of refugees the federal government brings in are automatically eligible for Social Security Assistance and Medicaid? All the Cambodians and Vietnamese that were brought here in the 1960s and '70s became Social Security eligible even though some never became American citizens. Since the 1990s it's been Middle Easterners and Latin American refugees.

Oh...right...non-white folks.
Yeah, you're right. Can't have that.

Latin Americans are white folks. Too bad you don't know that. What I'm saying is there are millions of people that never paid into Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid but have been paid from it for decades.